I am preparing to help out with the annual classic film festival Cinecon which is held every Labor Day Weekend in Hollywood at the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre.
One actress who worked heaps and heaps in the 20's and 30's- Marie Prevost- will have several of her films screened there

flapperjane.com

I have become so intrigued and fascinated with her story and appeal that I decided she needed a thread.
She may be a forgotten star now but her credits are astounding as you will see.

Here is an vintage article from Blue Book of the Screen (1923) about Marie when her star was only beginning to shine:

Quote:

LIKE the Florodora girls, the original Sennett bathing girls not only became famous in the public eye, but several of them wafted to stardom and made good indeed. One of these was Marie Prevost, today a leading lady in special screen production.

She was born in Sarnia, Canada, November 8th, about twenty-two years ago. Brought up in a home of plenty, she was given the best education which money could provide. She was sent to the Laurette Sisters at Denver, St. Mary's in Los Angeles, and the Glen Taylor at Alameda, Calif.

Then she proceeded to enjoy the out-of-door life in "the land of sunshine." Her introduction to pictures occurred in 1917, when a girl friend took her to the Sennett studio on a visit. Ford Sterling, who was directing a comedy, asked the girls to enter the crowd as "atmosphere." Later, when she was asked to take a role in "East Lynne With Variations," she accepted and, in a short time was playing featured parts with Keystone.

Being a lively outdoor girl, an expert swimmer and rider, she achieved a name as a "bathing beauty" during this period. While with the Sennett organization she played prominent roles in the following: "Yankee Doodle in Berlin," a six-reel special; "Sleuths," "Reilly's Wash Day," "When Love Is Blind," "Love's False Faces," "The Dentist," "Uncle Tom With a Cabin," "The Speak-Easy" and "Down on the Farm." She achieved drama later when she was starred by Universal. Important among these features were: "Nobody's Fool," "Don't Get Personal" and "The Butterfly."

Following this engagement, Miss Prevost was called into the "special" field, one of her greater roles being that of "Marjorie Jones," the feminine lead in the production, "Brass," at Warners' studio.

Her recent success was in F. Scott Fitzgerald's picturized novel, "The Beautiful and Damned," in which Miss Prevost was starred with Kenneth Harlan.

She is under contract with Warner Brothers' organization and will continue playing featured roles in recent "best sellers." She is fast gaining the recognition of the public.

Miss Prevost never has entered stage life, nor has she attempted any other vocation save that of screen work. She still is a girl of the outdoors. Although golf gets a portion of her spare time, swimming is the more frequent recreation, winter as well as summer. Her hobbies are dancing and reading.

Marie above as a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty (these films and the Sennett Studio were located within 5 minutes of where I live here in Echo Park LA was then called Edendale).

Marie Prevost was born Mary Bickford Dunn in Sarnia, Ontario on November 8, 1898. Marie broke into films when she was 18 years old in the production of UNTO THOSE WHO SIN (1916). Finding work in film was difficult in the early days, just as it is today. Marie found herself in odd jobs until 1917 when she found herself in another film entitled SECRETS OF A BEAUTY PARLOR. After filming was completed, Marie found herself unemployed in the movie world and went back scrapping for a living. She continued on casting calls, but it wasn't until 1919 when she played a role in UNCLE TOM WITHOUT A CABIN. Finally, in 1921, movie moguls discovered her talent and began casting her in a number of roles. She appeared in four films that year and an additional six in 1922. Marie seemed to be on a roll. She stayed busy through the balance of the twenties in a number of films, mostly comedies. As a matter of fact, she would continue making films until 1933, when her appeal began to dwindle. No work found her in 1934 and precious few after that. With the advent of sound, Marie's thick New England accent didn't lend itself well to the "demon microphone", despite her beauty. Turning to alcohol, to drown her depression, Marie died on January 23, 1937 in Hollywood, California, virtually broke and living in a dilapidated apartment. She never saw the release, in 1938, of her final appearance on celluloid, that being TEN LAPS TO GO. She was 38 years old.

so sad...

Quote:

Popular star in Hollywood for two decades through 1936. Began as a Mack Sennett "Bathing Beauty" in 1917, later starring in dozens of light comedies. But not long into the sound era, she would have encountered problems with her burgeoning weight, to the jeopardy of her career. Her self-remedy resulted ultimately in her starving to death.

Quote:

Spouse
Kenneth Harlan (1924 - 1927) (divorced)
Trivia

Sister of actress Peggy Prevost.

Possibly most famous for being the subject of a Nick Lowe song, "Marie Provost" (sic).

Her death was not discoved until after neighbors had complained about incessant barking by her little dachshund.

Died from a combination of acute alcholism and extreme malnutrition. ["The Celebrity Death Book," by James Robert Parish]

Pert and pretty Marie Prévost as a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty
early in her career

Kenneth Harlan and his intended Marie Prévost
From Photoplay Magazine, September, 1924
"Orange blossoms and wedding bells are going to mean a whole lot
to these two screen favorites one of these days. Marie Prevost and
Kenneth Harlan admit they are going to be married, but when and
where they refuse to divulge to their closest intimates."

from wikipedia:

Quote:

Early life

Born Mary Bickford Dunn in Sarnia, Ontario, when still a child her family moved first to Denver, Colorado and then later to Los Angeles, California. While working as a secretary, she applied and obtained an acting job at the Hollywood studio owned by Mack Sennett. Himself from a small Canadian town outside of Montreal, Sennett dubbed her as the exotic French girl, adding Mary Dunn to his collection of bathing beauties under the stage name of Marie Prevost.
[edit]

Career Rise

One of her first publicly successful film roles came in the 1920 romantic film Love, Honor, and Behave opposite another newcomer and Sennett protegé, George O'Hara. Initially cast in numerous minor comedic roles as the sexy, innocent young girl, she worked in several films for Sennett's studio until 1921 when she signed with Universal Studios. At Universal, Marie Prevost was still relegated to light comedies and after making only eight films she left to sign with Warner Brothers in 1922.

It was there that she got her first big break appearing in a standout role in the F. Scott Fitzgerald story, The Beautiful and Damned. Her performance brought good reviews and director Ernst Lubitsch chose her for a major role opposite Adolphe Menjou in 1924's The Marriage Circle. Of her performance as the beautiful seductress, Ernst Lubitsch said that she was one of the few actresses in Hollywood who knew how to underplay comedy to achieve the maximum effect.

This impressive performance, praised by the New York Times, resulted in Lubitsch casting her in Three Women in 1924 and in Kiss Me Again the following year. But, just when her career was blossoming, tragedy struck her family again in 1926. While her mother was traveling in Florida with actress Vera Steadman and another Canadian friend, Hollywood studio owner, Al Christie, an automobile accident took her mother's life.
[edit]

Decline

Devastated, the loss of her only remaining parent led to an addiction to alcohol and to Marie Prevost's own ultimate destruction. Married to actor Kenneth Harlan since 1924, that marriage soon ended in a 1927 divorced.

Prevost tried to get past her personal torment by burying herself in her work, becoming one of the busiest actresses of the day, starring in numerous roles as the temptingly beautiful seductress who in the end was always the honorable heroine.

However, her depression caused her to binge on food resulting in significant weight gain. By the 1930s she was working less and less being offered only secondary parts, frequently in humiliating roles as a cheap-talking floozy, such as 1930's Sam Wood directed prison-flick Paid where Prevost took second-billing to Joan Crawford.

As a result of all this, her financial income declined and her growing dependency on alcohol added to her weight problems. By 1934, she had no work at all and her financial situation deteriorated dramatically. The downward spiral became greatly aggravated when her weight problems forced her into repeated crash dieting in order to keep whatever bit part a movie studio offered.

At the age of 38, secluded and hiding away from the world, living alone in an apartment house, Marie Prevost died from a combination of alcoholism and her self-imposed malnutrition. Her body was not discovered for days, and the police report stated that her pet dachshund "had chewed up her arms and legs in a futile attempt to awaken her." Her pauper's burial place is unknown to this day.

After having performed in 105 films Marie Prevost has now been honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6201 Hollywood Blvd.

On his 1978 album "Jesus of Cool," released in the US as "Pure Pop for Now People," British rocker Nick Lowe related Marie Prevost's sad tale in the song "Marie Provost," a bouncy little ditty with rather gruesome lyrics. Along with changing her last name slightly, the song has Marie coming from New York instead of Canada. It includes the immortal line "She was a winner that became the doggie's dinner." The line comes from the caption of a photo of Prevost's corpse in situ (with dog bites) published in Kenneth Anger's exposé Hollywood Babylon. The book is also the source of Lowe's erroneous biographical information on Prevost.

Poor Marie Prevost. Reduced to a misspelled title of a 80s pop song. Remembered primarily for her gruesome death, most histories of silent film ignore her. But for a time in the 1920s, Prevost was a big box-office draw, a good comedienne whose looks epitomized jazz-age babies and eventually led to her demise.

One of the many incorrect stories about Prevost is that she was a Brooklyn-bred girl with a nasal whine. She was actually born Mary Bickford Dunn in Ontario, Canada, on November 8, 1898, and educated in a Catholic convent school. When her father died, Prevost moved to Los Angeles with her mother and sister, where she found work as a stenographer. Prevost was a looker, and she soon found herself knocking at Mack Sennett's door. Sennett dubbed her "the exotic French girl," and rechristened her "Marie Prevost." Prevost joined his gang of infamous Sennett Bathing Beauties. They were, in effect, a bunch of pretty young things who braved the California sun and surf to strike various provocative poses. Prevost was in good company. Other Sennett Beauties included Gloria Swanson, Mabel Normand, and Carole Lombard.

Prevost had the perfect look for the time. With a mane of dark curls cropped into a pleasing bob, large eyes, pouting bee-stung lips, and wide oval face, the petite star was the picture of an ideal flapper, and the devil-may-care attitude that she reflected on screen reflected the flapper philosophy.
But after playing numerous ingénues for Sennett, she did what so many other Sennett stars did, "start with Sennett, get rich somewhere else."[1] She left in 1921 to sign with Universal Studios. There, she portrayed flappers in a string of films, including Moonlight Follies (1921) and The Married Flapper (1922) before leaving for Warner Brothers.

With her move, Prevost finally began receiving juicy roles, starting with the lead in The Beautiful and the Damned (1923). Although F. Scott Fitzgerald thought the film adaptation of his novel was “by far the worst movie I've ever seen in my life—cheap, vulgar, ill-constructed and shoddy,"[2] critics and audiences seemed to enjoy it. Perhaps it was due to the chemistry between Prevost and her leading man, Kenneth Harlan. A popular star who played the romantic lead in countless films throughout the 1920s, he and Prevost hit it off and were married the following year.
Prevost's star was rising fast. She was showing the studio heads that she was more than just a pretty face and was given roles that allowed her to display her smart, comic timing. Often playing roles just short of risqué, her characters always turned out to be good girls by the end of the pictures. One of the best of these was Ernst Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle (1924). In it, Prevost plays Mizzi, a bored Austrian housewife married to a professor played by Adolph Menjou. The film opens with Menjou's morning routine being delayed by an obviously piqued wife. Friction is afoot in this marriage and since it's a Lubitsch film, viewers know that mischief is just around the corner. After bumping into an old friend (Florence Vidor), Mizzi begins a flirtation with Vidor's husband, played by Monte Blue. The film is filled with the "Lubitsch touch," from the costumes to the timing, and Prevost is marvelous in it. When she gets into an argument with Menjou it doesn't matter that you are watching a silent film—you know exactly what she's telling him. Again in this film, as in many of her others, she plays the part of the flapper perfectly, a fitting contrast to Vidor's prim and proper wife. This was just one of three films Prevost would film with Lubitsch and one of ten with co-star Monte Blue—the two were quite a popular pair in the mid-twenties.

Lubitsch was not the only director to note Prevost's skill. Prevost worked with some of the greatest directors of her age, including Frank Capra, Cecil B. DeMille, Mervyn LeRoy, and Malcolm St. Clair.

Prevost was on top but as with many jazz babies, the bubble was about to burst. In 1926, while traveling in Florida with screenwriter Al Christie, Prevost's mother was killed in a car accident. Prevost, who had left Warner to sign with Producers Distributing Corporation by this time, was busy starring opposite the original Harrison Ford (they would make six films together). Her mother's death hit her hard. Prevost's marriage was also starting to crack (she and Harlan would divorce the following year with Prevost siting "Harlan furnished her no amusement; stayed out late at night; and was unreasonably jealous"[3] ), and so she did what many do when combating depression: she took to the bottle.
revost continued working but the alcohol started to affect her already curvy frame, and she began putting on weight. By 1929, sound was all the rage and studios were able to play hardball with their stars. Prevost, whose voice recorded fine (contrary to rumors), was without a contract, had lost her flapper figure, and her film, The Godless Girl (1929), directed by DeMille, was a flop. She found herself sliding down the Hollywood ladder.

In the 1930s she was able to find work, often portraying the wisecracking best friend, and even acted alongside some of the biggest stars of the decade—Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford. But her weight problems made the good roles far and few between. The girl who had once been a major player was reduced to bit roles with few lines.

Prevost tried losing weight with a modicum of success. In a 1936 article called "Sometimes They Do Come Back" in the New York Times, Prevost warrants a pitiful appearance:

"In the studio restaurant at Warners there is an "Old-Timers Tables" that is reserved, in tacit arrangement, for the group of former stars who like to talk over together their halcyon days. A few weeks ago, Marie Prevost sat down at the table. The siren of Mack Sennett days had been successful with a reducing course and had got herself a job as a contract player. She was put to work almost immediately, in a small part in The Bengal Tiger....Miss Prevost is unbilled in The Bengal Tiger: She has only three lines to say, and those short ones. But she is back at work, skipping arc-light cables and dodging camera dollies on the set once more. ...A few more parts of a few lines each and the studio may find bigger and better things for her to do."[4]

But it was wishful thinking. Prevost's "reducing course" consisted of drinking alcohol and not eating. A star just a decade earlier was now, in her mid-thirties, an "old-timer" and a has-been who was killing herself.

On January 23, 1937, police were called to a rundown apartment building in Los Angeles after neighbors complained of a dog barking. Inside, they found Prevost dead on her bed. The cause was a combination of alcoholism and malnutrition—she had basically starved herself to death.

In the end, it was Prevost's pet dachshund who helped place his mistress in the halls of Hollywood notoriety. The police report stated that the dog "had chewed up her arms and legs in a futile attempt to awaken her." Hence the Nick Lowe song, and Prevost's unfortunate obituary.

When she died, Prevost left $300 to a half sister and a friend[5]. Without the funds to pay for a proper funeral, Prevost was buried in a pauper's grave, whose exact location is unknown. All that remains is a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame to remind visitors of the vivacious star who once graced the silver screen. Poor Marie.

Some more of Marie around 1916 as a Sennett Bathing Beauty :Mack Sennett "Bathing Beauties" Phyllis Haver and Marie Prevost cavort in the latest risqué swimwear at Three Arch Bay in 1916. Here the two famous women are posing on the tip of Whale Island, with Rogers Point and Laguna Beach to the north in the background.
light-headed.com

• The film was shot in 31 days at a cost of $529,000 and made MGM a profit of $415,000. (US)

• For her services in Paid, MGM head Louis B. Mayer gave Joan a bonus of $10,000 and wrote: "In appreciation of the co-operation and excellent services rendered by you, we take great pleasure in handing you your check made payable to your order in the amount of $10,000...this does not affect the terms of your contract dated 2 November, 1928." (US)

• Four other versions of Paid were released, all titled Within the Law: In 1916 (silent, with Muriel Starr in the lead role), 1917 (silent, with Alice Joyce), 1923 (silent, with Norma Talmadge), and 1939 (with Ruth Hussey).

• The film was originally slated for Norma Shearer. When she became pregnant, Joan stepped in.

• Former silent star Marie Prevost co-starred with Joan and apparently the two became friends--after Marie was found dead in 1937, among her belongings was an uncashed check made out to her and signed by Joan Crawford.

apparently they are trying to preserve another of her silents Daughters of Pleasure which was located in Australia...it costars Clara Bow.
To show Marie's star status, she is the headliner and Clara is not even mentioned on the poster.

Newly rich Mark Hadley drifts from his old-fashioned wife into a secret liaison with Lila Millas, a pretty French girl. At the same time, he advises his daughter, Marjory, to break her ties with Kent Merrill, a "chippy-chasing young rounder." Marjory visits Lila, who was her school friend in Paris, and is shocked to find her father there. She upbraids him and, heedless of his previous advice, goes with Merrill to his summer place. En route, they are sobered by an automobile accident, and they get married. Hadley confesses his misdeeds to his wife and is forgiven. (From: "The American Film Institute Catalogue of Feature Films")

(Variety Film Reviews 1921-25)"...is rather more than moderately strong program entertainment. Its story, that of a nouveau riche family hitting the shoot-the-chutes with a vengeance and just pulling in the reins before the final splash, has been told before. But William Beaudine has outdone himself in direction and a cast of screen notables lends invaluable aid.

If the film had lived up to its early promise it might have qualified for the first-run houses. But after the story has reached a certain point, there is a definite lack of fresh inspiration and from then on it is just a commonplace readjustment.

There are several laughs, chiefly at the efforts of the old boy to fit his number 48 self into a perfect 36 corset and his subsequent attempts to buffalo the family. Wilfred Lucas plays this role with a deft comic touch. Marie Prevost rivals Miss Bow in provocativeness, and in the matter of tantalizing lips she need give ground to no one. Edyth Chapman and Monte Blue round out the cast, the latter rather out of his element as the chippy-chasing young rounder.

With these names and with a story as sexy as the title, D.O.P. should be a Bow office beauty for the average house."